Be inspired to carry God's glory to the ends of the earth: My review of "Learning to Love" by Heidi & Rolland Baker

about the book...

What does LOVE look like?

Love is food and comfort to a ten-year-old amputee, abandoned on the side of the road

Love is a new roof for an elderly widow installed before the rainy season

Love is sharing hope with the homeless man on your street corner

Love is not just an ideal. Love is action. Love looks like something.

Because if you don't stop, who will?

Continuing where their book Expecting Miracles left off, this narrative draws from the last five years of the life of Iris Ministries. Woven alongside fascinating narrative from Mozambique is teaching from Heidi and Rolland that communicates the distilled wisdom about the heart of the Gospel from all their years of serving the poor.

More than any of their previous books, this one has the most to say about what Rolland and Heidi have learned about love--whether in Africa or wherever home might be: finding intimacy with Jesus, concentrating on the humble and lowly, being willing to suffer for love's sake, finding God's supply of utterly needed miracles, and walking in the unquenchable joy of the Lord. Every reader will find incredible challenge and refreshment in these pages.

 my review....

Heidi and Rolland Baker have learned to make themselves available to the Holy Spirit, to obediently follow where he leads, to open their arms in love, and step out in faith no matter what that looks like. The result is that people's lives around them are forever changed. "Learning to Love" recounts many of their experiences serving Christ in Mozambique and what they have learned in the process. I absolutely loved the teaching and the stories that flow from this book, from stories of practical love shown by things like drilling wells for thirsty villagers, to miraculous healings of people who are blind or sick or emotionally damaged. While the book has several main themes, readers should expect to enjoy the book as a series of vignettes rather than a straight-forward biographical account of the Baker's lives. This is a book that deserves to read through more than once to allow the authors to challenge you in your own faith, and to take risks such as they have done, and see God respond in his power and his grace. I love where the authors write the following:

"Where does the kind of faith that soars come from? It comes from love, from knowing who Jesus is, from understanding what he thinks of you and realizing who he has made you to be. When you are in love you have power. When you start to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, you start to get full of God and full of understanding that whatever He asks you to do, you can do; that wherever He asks you to go, you can go.....Passion: It makes us unstoppable".

If we all lived in radical obedience to God like the Bakers do, the world would be vastly different indeed. Oh Lord, give me that same passion!

I strongly recommend this fascinating and well-written book, and award it 4 out of 5 stars.

Book has been provided courtesy of Baker Publishing Group and Graf-Martin Communications, Inc. Available at your favourite bookseller from Chosen, a division of Baker Publishing Group.

about the authors...

Heidi and Rolland Baker, founders of Iris Ministries, served as missionaries in Indonesia and Hong Kong before following God's call in 1995 to Mozambique. In the face of overwhelming need, the Bakers now watch God provide miraculously for well over 10,000 children every day through their ministry, and many more through the Iris network of more than 15,000 churches, Bible schools, primary schools, and remote outreach programs. They live in Mozambique, Africa.